This Texas Baby: The Birth Story - Part II

Alright, lets see if I can wrap this story up in this post! I imagine it will at least take me one more post after this though...

When I got to the hospital around 5 I went on up to the l&d floor and rang the bell to be let in. When the nurse came on over the intercom she asked who I was there to see and it was the weirdest feeling saying "no one, I'm here to be admitted" she got all excited and said "oh, ok, great! Common in!" In I went and was placed in delivery room number 3 and was introduced to my first nurse of the night, with it being so close to shift change this nurse did not last very long... just long enough to give me on hell of a bruise on the back of my left hand from trying to insert an IV and failing. That bruise hurt me all night long when Robert would hold my hands and rub the back of them with his thumbs during contractions. I could never muster up enough energy to tell him that it was killing me though! After the back of the hand IV failed another nurse came in and tried to put on in on the side of my wrist, she was able to get several tubes of blood but then the vein blew. When she told me that and said they were going to have to try another spot I almost lost it. I think it was just a combination of everything hitting me at once that this was actually happening, I was about to have a baby. It also didn't help that I was freaking out and feeling terrible about not calling Robert sooner in the day to have him there to hold my hand during the IV. See, I've never been in the hospital so it was all a new experience to me and Robert has had several hospital stays in his life so he is my expert. I feel like I am just babbling on about this part so I am going to stop and move on.

After the IV was finally inserted and capped off I was left alone for a little bit. Long enough to call my mom and dad and let them know what was going on. My mom and I decided that she would wait until the morning to come in from Houston as we did not think things were going to progress fast. Well that was a mistaken thought and later, even now still, I regret not telling her to go on and come that night.

I also spoke to Robert again and he let me know that his mom and stepdad were on their was up from San Antonio. Robert's stepdad happened to have a work conference in San Antonio that week and his mom came along in the hopes that Sadie would make her appearance while they were there. After getting the news from the doctor that they were going to induce the following week she almost did not come along! But now she is very glad she decided to go on and come.

MIL and SFIL got to the hospital around 6:30, about the same time the nurse came in to start me on the pitocin. Robert finally got to the hospital around 8/8:30. It was the best feeling ever to see him walking though that door, I just wanted to hug him and not let go. Around that time I would say I started noticing the contractions. It started as just mild cramping, similar to period cramps. the worst part of that time was having to keep semi still and in one position due to the monitors hooked up to me. Whenever the contractions started all I wanted to do was move around, change sides, get up etc. But doing any of that made the monitors move and made it appear that the baby was in distress, so a nurse was coming in every time to readjust the monitors. Ha, at one point the nurse got mad at me because I still had a waist, can you believe that? I think she said something like "oh, that's the problem, you still have a waist curve so that is causing the monitor to ride up." Haha, so sorry I still had a waist!

Around 10:30 or so MIL and SFIL left to run out to the house to take care of the chickens and dogs and go get some food. I think about the food, they might of gone right after Robert arrived for food, it's all a blur. After they left I decided I needed some sort of pain relief. In my head it made the most sense to go on and use one of the IV drugs, that way I could try and get some sleep and it would have plenty of time to go through mine and Sadie's system before it came time to actually have her. If you ask Robert he would say that he wishes his mom and stepdad never left, he said I was doing great while they were there but as soon as they left I lost it. I can totally believe this, I don't like causing a ruckus or anything like that in front of other people so I can see how I was keeping a good grip on things with them there. Robert's mom even said that later on in the night when things got really bad for me I was still super calm and quiet and I never yelled at anybody and even when I did upset I would just whisper at people. I think a lot of that was because I could not make the effort to be loud and scream at anyone!

After getting the IV drugs I went though a cycle of sleeping/passing out and waking up in the middle of a contraction with the drugs wearing off around every hour and a half. If I could go back I would avoid the IV drugs, I believe that waking up while a contraction was happening was the worst thing I could of done, it gave me no time to prepare or practice breathing or do anything other than be in immense amounts of pain. At one point I was so sick of it I broke down and asked for an epidural. In order to get an epidural my doctor required that I be at least 3 cm dialted so the nurse checked me and I was only a 1. It was the most heartbreaking news at that point, but I just kept going and powering though. Thankfully I did not have any back labor, which I have heard is terrible. All of my pain was centered low in my abdomen, like the worst period cramps ever. I kept trying different positions, standing up, leaning over things, switching sides but nothing really helped. All that helped was squeezing Robert's hand/arm and doing my best to take deep even breaths. I could tell when I lost control of my breathing I lost control of the pain, and that was the worst.

The funniest part about the whole night was how freaking hot I was. The ac was turned all the way down in my room but I still remember sweating at some points. I also remember Robert sitting in the chair next to me huddled under a blanket his mom brought and his mom sitting in a chair with her big jacked on over her sweatshirt and gloves on! Robert's mom told me later that whenever I was up moving and she would see my bare back in the gown she just wanted to come over and rub me to keep me warm, makes me laugh cause I do not remember feeling cold until after I got the epidural.

Around 4am I asked the nurse to check me again and see how close I was to 3 cm. Sadly, she told me I was only at 2. Now, I do not recall what time she checked me before and I was only a 1, so I have no idea how much time had passed, I think that check was around 2am though. Amazingly a few minutes later she came back in and said that she called my doctor and my doctor said that she would go on and approve administering the epidural!

After hearing that I could finally get an epidural I felt like things were finally going to be ok and bearable. However, Robert did not feel that way. He was very concerned that if I did receive the epidural it would just slow my progress down even more and would for sure see me ending up with a c-section. He kept asking me over and over again if I was sure that was what I wanted. I am glad he did, he knew how much I wanted to try and go with out major drug intervention, so he was just doing his part as my advocate. All I kept thinking was if it's 4am and I am only 2 cm dilated after being on pitocin for 10 hours how in the world is an epidural going to slow it down much more!?! Plus, I was also thinking things were going to end in a c-section no matter what so why spend anymore time in crazy amounts of pain if they are going to have to numb me anyways for the surgery?

I will stand by my decision to get an epidural for the rest of my life. I think it was the best decision I made during my labor.

Once my doctor approved the epidural the anesthesiologist came in to see me and dished out the second most heartbreaking news of the night. I would have to ingest a whole bag of IV fluids before he could administer the epidural. At that point I had just finished my fist bag of fluids, yes my first bag, the one they hooked me up to at 6pm the night before. How the world was I going to make it through a second bag! Turns out they had the first bag on a pretty slow drip, so the nurse opened the drip on the second one all the way and then the anesthesiologist came in and put what looked like a blood pressure cuff on the bag to pump the fluids into me even faster. As soon as I had the fluids in me the anesthesiologist got me all hooked up with the epidural I was like a different person! I could talk and have a conversation and most importantly I could sleep!

After the epidural got started the nurse did an internal check one more time and I was up to 3 cm, not sure on effacement and my cervix was still facing the back. It was 5am. After 12 hours all I had done was dilate 3 cm.

Success!

I would like to call last night an amazingly successful night when it comes to sleeping. Granted it was still only sleeping in two hour intervals, but at least it was full two hour intervals the whole night! No sleeping for 45 minutes and waking up to crying little one hungry for more.

Ahh, off to get some things done around the house... and maybe working on the second part of my birth story!

This Texas Baby: The Birth Story - Part I

As time is quickly approaching 2 weeks since Sadie was born I figure I should get on writing down her birth story. I already find some details getting blurry in my memory, and that makes me sad, but I guess they are just being replaced everyday with even more amazing memories. Plus, things could be a little blurry from lack of sleep!

So, lets back up to the morning of Thursday, February 10th... I got up for work at my normal time, if not a little earlier. When I went to the restroom I noticed that I had some brownish orange mucusy discharge and thought that maybe it was part of my mucus plug. Which from all my reading, really meant nothing. Labor could still be 2 weeks away. All through getting ready for work I kept going to the restroom and noticing more and more discharge. Also, I was just starting to feel like something was going on, call it a precursor to mothers intuition or something, but I decided it might be a good idea to get my piles of hospital stuff more organized, which I am so glad I did! So, off to work I go. Once I got to work on used the restroom a few times I no longer noticed any of the mucusy discharge but decided I should call and let my doctor know anyways. When I called them and told them what was going on the nurse confirmed that it sounded like I was losing my mucus plug and to just keep an eye on things and let them know if anything else happened. Well at this point I noticed that I was soaking the panty liner I was wearing (I had been wearing panty liners for discharge for about 2 months or so). At first I thought maybe I has sneezed and peed myself a little and just didn't realize it, so I changed my liner and went on about my business all the while frantically trying to wrap as much work stuff up as I could! Around noon I walked to lunch with my friend and co-worker Melanie and I noticed I kept on feeling like I was leaking more and more. On our way back from lunch I expressed to her what was happening and she told me to call the doctor but I still held off! I just was not convinced that things were happening! Finally around 3:15 I called my doctors office again and told them I thought my water had broken and they told me to come over and get checked out. I stayed at work just a little bit longer, trying to finish things up, let my boss know I was going to the doctor to get checked but that I should be back later that afternoon, haha, that did not happen!

I got over to the doctors around 3:45 and got into a room and saw the doctor around 4. After telling her everything she said they were going to have me change and bring in a machine in to check and see if my water had broken. And now for the embarrassing part... as I am changing my clothes I leak all over the doctor's office floor, not like a gushing amount or anything but more than I was comfortable with! I tried to clean it all up with paper towels and then just sat on the table where I soaked the paper liner! When the doctor and nurse came in with the machine I told them what happened and the nurse had me lay back while she looked under my gown and said "oh, yep, your water definitely broke!" Haha, looking back it's all kind of funny. The doctor pushed the testing machine away and said "guess we wont need that!" She then did an internal exam on me and guess what!?! Still no dilation, no effacement and my cervix was still facing rear. She then told me that I needed to go on over to the hospital and get checked in. Is it bad that I asked if I could go back to work for a little bit? Her answer was no. She then told me that if nothing was happening with in the next two hours they were going to start me on pitocin. Since my water broke before noon we were working against that 24 hours to get you out in and if my body was not doing what it was supposed to be doing the pitocin would be necessary.

At this point you might be wondering where Robert was. Well, he was in Houston working. As soon as the doctor left the room, before I got dressed or anything I called him and our conservation went something like this:

R: Hey, what's up? (sounding very distracted)
M: You need to come home.
R: Huh? What? Why?
M: My water broke.
R: Oh! Ok, ok! I'm coming!

I later found out that he almost did not answer my call! It was right around 5 that I called him and he figured I was just calling him to say I was leaving work and heading home. So glad he did not ignore me!

As I am pulling into the hospital parking lot Robert calls me back and says that he is waiting on his co-workers to bring his truck back over to him and then he will be on his way. He got all packed up and out to the parking lot and realized he had let his co-workers borrow his truck to go work on another job. And also to say thanks for calling him to leave right at 5 during Houston rush hour!

You might also be asking why I did not call Robert earlier in the day to let him know what I thought might be going on. Well, I honestly did not think it was really going to be anything, at least not until I got to the doctors office. If I could go back and change one thing about those two days it would be to call your daddy sooner. It was super hard going to the hospital by myself and being alone for those few hours until he got there. (I wasn't really alone, Robert's mom and stepdad made it there around 6:30 and Melanie came by and brought my bags from the house and stayed for a little bit. But even though they were there it was just not the same as having Robert there. I can not tell you how relieved I was when he walked in the door!)

Ok, I think that is all I have in me today. Next time I'll go over what happened once I finally got to the hospital!

(So glad I copy all my posts before hitting publish! As soon as I hit publish it popped up with an error, would not of wanted to retype all this!)

This Texas Baby: Introducing...

 Excuse me for being a few days behind (in fact, what day is it even?), but I've been a little busy getting to know this little girl...

Umm, is it wrong that I love that she has a mohawk?

I will try and post soon about her birth and how everything happened. In the mean time I would like to say I have already lost over 19 pounds! Was not expecting the weight to fall off that fast, at all! Even more exciting than that is how much I love this tiny little thing that depends on me for everything. It is probably the hardest and toughest thing I have ever done, even more than the birth. But everyday is getting better and better.

Ok, gotta go be momma now.

This Texas Baby: The Extended Edition

I had my 40 week doctors appointment yesterday and had to ask some questions and make some decisions I never thought I would have to make. After measuring me and finding that I had not grown any in the previous two weeks or gained any weight the doctor decided that baby is pretty much at her max. She also did an internal exam which revealed pretty much what I thought it was going to... no dilation and no effacement. But it also revealed that my cervix is posterior, which means it's facing my back and the baby is facing my front. That is the one good thing, the baby is down and engaged in my pelvis, but since my cervix is facing the wrong direction her head is not pushing on anything to say "hey, it's go time, I want out of here!" The doctor tried to "manipulate" my cervix, sounds really painful but it did not bother me, but I don't think she was successful.

So, at the moment the plan is this, next Tuesday night I will be admitted to the hospital and have cervidil inserted. Wednesday morning the cervidil will be removed and I'll be allowed to shower etc. Depending on what, if anything, the cervidil did I will then be started on pitocin and will hopefully help with dilation and labor and lead to a vaginal delivery. However, if my family history has anything to do with it, I need to prepare myself for a c-section.

This is really hard for me. I have had such and amazingly easy and fantastic pregnancy that I was really hoping it would continue all the way to the end. I really want to see what my body is capable of and experience what it's essentially built for. I really, really wanted to avoid as many drugs as possible. But now I know if I go in Tuesday night statistics show that I am like 80% (totally making that number up, but I know it's high) more likely to get an epidural, so that is on top of the cervidil and pitocin. That is a lot of drug interaction! But I know there are huge risks in letting the baby stay in me much longer past next Wednesday and ultimately it is not about what I want and what it good for me but what is good for the baby.

I am trying my best to stay positive about it all, and at least I have these few days to come to terms with what might (or might not!) happen. This is one of the reasons I did not type up a birth plan, if I have a list I STICK TO THE LIST. And I knew that was not realistic in this situation. For me, not having a plan is better, that way I wont be stressed out when/if things do not follow the plan. My husband and my doctor both know how I feel and what I want and I believe they will advocate for me if I am unable to.

For now, I am just hoping and praying that mother nature and my body will kick in before next Tuesday and get things going naturally. I am trying to walk and be up on my feet as much as I can but it is hard. It's so stinking cold outside it makes it almost impossible to walk outside. There are only so many times you can walk around Target before you start looking like you work there. Add that to how tired I am when I get home, some nights I just sit on the couch until 8:30 when I go to bed!

Sigh, I did not mean for this to get this long, guess I had a bit more to say about it all than I thought. So, if you made it this far please send good thoughts and prayers my way!

This Texas Baby: Week 40 Check-In

BABY'S TASK FOR THE WEEK: GET OUT OF ME! There are a lot of people who are very eager to meet you, so it's time to come out and greet the world.

SYMPTOMS: So stinking tired, I just want to sleep all the time. I think a lot of that has to do with getting up to pee every two hours during the night, I guess it's all just preparing me for when you are actually here. I think you fell more into my pelvis last week, I feel like my belly is lower and I feel the urge to hold it up a lot. I also think I have been having some contractions but I am not really sure what they are supposed to feel like so not sure if that is what I am feeling.

CURRENT MOOD: I have a doctors appointment in roughly 4 hours. I can not wait to figure out what my next steps are. I have a feeling it's going to be something along the line of waiting to see what happens for the next week. I have my fingers crossed that an internal exam will indicate SOMETHING is happening. I really would like to avoid inducing, but if you have not shown up in the next week I might be begging for it.

THIS WEEK'S GETTING READY FOR BABY FINISHED HOMEWORK: There is nothing left to do, baby! We were expecting you to be here by now, so we have everything done. I say we have everything done, but I am sure there is always something we forgot or something else we could be doing.

 

NEXT WEEK'S GETTING READY FOR BABY HOMEWORK: Hopefully there is not going to be much getting ready for baby this week and a whole lot of holding baby!

And here is an iPhone Hipstamatic photo I took this morning:

 

This Texas Baby: The Nursery!

I figured I should do a quick nursery show off! We based everything around this bedding we found at Buy Buy Baby. Three of the walls are painted an apple green color and one is painted a chocolate brown. After looking through the pictures I took I realized that I did not take any pictures to where you could see the brown wall! I will have to try and take one of those. The banner above the window says "sugar & spice" and is from my shower... hmm still never posted about the shower did I?

Looking into the room from the door. It's a teeeny room, but I think we did great with the space.

Closer up view of the tree and chair. Love, love, love that tree.

Another view of the tree.

This deer is on the other side of the dresser/changing table/hutch. Took us forever to figure out where to put it! (Blurry picture, sorry!)

View of the crib with the "S" that Robert cut out above it.

Hutch/changing table.

Close up view of the bedding.

Uhh, pretty sure she already has more clothes than Robert and I combined!

This Texas Baby: Week 39 Check-In

 

BABY'S TASK FOR THE WEEK: Umm, would you like to come out this week? That would be a good task. Cause I am TOTALLY ready for that. But you seem to be perfectly happy in your current little home. But, good job on gaining over 2 lbs from 3 weeks ago! The U/S tech said that while I am still measuring smaller than 39 weeks you are weighing in at a whopping 6lbs 14 oz now! Which, I am still aware that all of those measurements are off and we wont really know how big you are until you decide to show up! So, um, show up soon, ok?

SYMPTOMS: Um! Pretty sure you have given me a stretch mark! Who waits until the last week to give their momma a stretch mark! Guess it is those 2lbs you put on. (And hey, if it is only the one, I won't complain!) And, I still have my belly button for those who may be wondering....

CURRENT MOOD: Mostly just ready for you to get here. But I am also really starting to get worked up over the actual process of getting you OUT OF ME. See, I really want to avoid a c-section, as I am sure most women want to as-well, but if anything about labor is hereditary I might have some problems. See, none of the women in my family have ever dilated! I don't know all the specifics but I know they were all give the pitocin (which I want to avoid also...) but it ended up doing nothing for them and they all ended up with c-sections. I suppose this is a reason why I am totally ok with you staying inside me as long as you want and coming out when you are ready vs when someone tells me you are or should be ready. Hopefully if I can hold of for that things will progress as they should!

THIS WEEK'S GETTING READY FOR BABY FINISHED HOMEWORK: I finished the wreath I made for the hospital, so cute! I threw a few more things in my hospital pile. Yup, it's turned into a hospital pile instead of a bag. I have pretty much decided I probably wont be packing that bag until it's go time.

 

NEXT WEEK'S GETTING READY FOR BABY HOMEWORK: Enjoy my, hopefully, last week/weekend as a twosome with your daddy!